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Bearcat MotorSports FSAE Team back in the top 15!

Bearcat Motorsports, the University of Cincinnati Formula SAE Team, again finished very strong, winding up in 14th place in the Overall Standings in the Formula SAE East Competition. The 2016 Formula SAE East Competition, held at the Michigan International Speedway this past week (May 11-14, 2016), was won by the University of Stuttgart followed by the Technical University of Graz (Austria). The highest placing US team was Oregon State University in 4th Place followed by Michigan State University and the University of Wisconsin (Madison).

Once again, the University of Cincinnati was the top team from the State of Ohio and finished in the Top Ten for US competitors. Official results will be posted shortly on the SAE web site (http://students.sae.org/cds/formulaseries/results/). The final event of the competition, the Endurance Event, was held last Saturday in blustery conditions with high winds, rain, hail that made finishing the event very difficult for all competitors.

Bearcat Motorsports ( https://uc.collegiatelink.net/organization/sae and http://www.bearcatmotorsports.com/ ) is the UC Academic Intercollegiate Competition (AIC) student group that participates in Formula SAE (FSAE), a collegiate design competition sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and supported by all of the major automotive companies and suppliers. The competition involves the design, construction, and testing of an open-wheel, Formula One style racecar. The students are involved in design, cost analysis and sales/marketing presentations as well as static and driving competitions against other collegiate teams from all over the world over the four days of the competition.

This event is the first event of the US Formula SAE Competition season and is the largest in the world, limited to 140 universities from all over the world. This year, 138 teams registered with 115 teams actually competing in the event. This year 104 teams successfully completed the Technical Inspection and were allowed to compete in the driving events. This is the only competition that Bearcat MotorSports will compete in this year due to Team members availability limited by graduation and the academic calendar. One more US Formula SAE event will be held this June, the Formula SAE West Competition in Lincoln, Nebraska (80 universities). Currently, there are other affiliated Formula SAE or Formula Student Competitions in Canada, England, Germany, Italy, Australia, Japan and Brazil.

Bearcat Motorsports is partially supported by the University Funding Board, as one of several Academic Intercollegiate Competition (AIC) groups. Other funding comes from the Mechanical and Materials Engineering, the College of Engineering and Applied Science, the UC Structural Dynamics Research Lab, several large local industry partners (Toyota, General Electric, Cummins, Ford, Marathon, IBM) as well as a large number of smaller industry partners (Machine Concepts, Hahn Automation, Full Throttle Indoor Karting, Xtreme Precision, Die Craft Machining & Engineering, Performance Electronics, Cincinnati, Inc., Tomak Precision, Vivid Wraps, Foseco, Voisard Tool, LLC).

Each year’s Team is dominated by senior Mechanical Engineering students who earn class credit for participating in this activity. The Team Leader this year is Joshua Lynch who worked with a strong Technical Committee to organize the activity and get things done on a schedule that began last August (2015) with the start of classes. The Technical Committee involved Specialty Team Leaders along with the Graduate Race Team Assistant and Faculty Advisor. The Specialty Team Leaders are: Aero Package - Sam Dignan, Drivetrain – Blair Jones, Frame – Oge Okoh, Electrical – Anton Smith, Suspension – Grant Walker, Engine – Brian Wall and Business – Michael Kaplan. The Driving Team included Sam Dignan, Grant Walker, Mike Schlasinger, Chris Gardner and Brodie Hensler. Including those mentioned above, there are a total of 25 graduating Seniors who contributed many long hours and received course credit along with a number of other undergraduate students who volunteer their time when possible.